In this chapter, I focus on the third of my three key questions about the development of representations of mental life: How do people of different ages deploy their conceptual representations of mental life to reason about specific entities in the world? As in Chapters III-IV, to address this question I draw on data from all of the current studies (Studies 1-4); for details about the methods of these studies, see Chapter II. The goal of this chapter is to provide “snapshots” of mental capacity attributions to various target characters in early childhood, middle childhood, and adulthood, and to explore in finer-grained detail more continuous changes in children’s beliefs about the mental lives of these characters between 4-9y of age, with particular attention to children’s assessment of animate vs. inanimate beings.
In analyzing these datasets with an eye toward documenting the application or deployment of the conceptual representations described in Chapters III-IV, the basic insight is that the attribution of specific mental capacities to specific target characters provides evidence of how conceptual representations of mental life are deployed in everyday social cognition. In Chapter II, I illustrated this with the following example: If participants who assess the mental capacities of Characters 1, 2, and 3 share one general pattern of mental capacity attributions, and participants who assess the mental capacities of Characters 4, 5, and 6 share another pattern, this provides some evidence that conceptual representations of mental life might play a role in structuring representations of (and interactions with) different classes of beings in the world. Here I will translate this general intuition into a specific analysis plan to be applied to each of these datasets in turn.
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In the context of this dissertation, Study 2 serves to provide an initial investigation of representations of mental life earlier in development, in what I have called middle childhood (7-9y). In this chapter, I focus on what this study can reveal about changes in the deployment of this concept between middle childhood and adulthood: How do US 7- to 9-year-old children’s attributions of BODY, HEART, and MIND compare to those of adults in their cultural context?
To review, in Study 2, 200 US adults and 200 US children between the ages of 7.01-9.99 years (median: 8.31y) each assessed a single target character on 40 mental capacities. This study employed the “edge case” variant of the general approach, with participants randomly assigned to assess either a beetle or a robot. (See Chapter II for detailed methods.)
To facilitate comparison between children and adults in Study 2, I use adults’ BODY, HEART, and MIND scales (as described in Chapter IV) to analyze both age groups. For analyses using scales derived from EFA of children’s own responses, see [XX Appendix C].
See Figure 5.2, panel A, for BODY, HEART, and MIND scores for both target characters among the 7- to 9-year-old children and adults in Study 2.
In the aggregate, both children and adults seem to have considered the beetle—the animate “edge case” featured in this study—to be a being with a moderately high degree of physiological sensations (mean BODY score among adults: 0.72, 95% CI: [0.66-0.77]; among children: 0.82, 95% CI: [0.79-0.86]) and perceptual-cognitive capacities (mean MIND score among adults: 0.69, 95% CI: [0.64-0.73]; among children: 0.70, 95% CI: [0.67-0.74]). However, adults and children appear to have diverged in their assessments of its abilities in the HEART domain: While adults tended to grant very little in the way of social-emotional abilities (mean HEART score among adults: 0.17, 95% CI: [0.12-0.23]), children’s HEART scores tended to hover around the midpoint of the scale (mean: 0.58, 95% CI: [0.52-0.64]).
For the robot—the inanimate “edge case” featured in this study—both adults and children, in the aggregate, indicated a high degree of perceptual-cognitive abilities (mean MIND score among adults: 0.82, 95% CI: [0.77-0.87]; among children: 0.80, 95% CI: [0.76-0.84]), and appeared to agree that the robot had less in the way of physiological sensations and social-emotional abilities than the beetle. However, the two age groups appear to have diverged in their assessments of the absolute degree of BODY and HEART that they were willing to grant the robot: Adults granted very little in either domain (mean BODY score: 0.10, 95% CI: [0.07-0.14]; mean HEART score: 0.06, 95% CI: [0.03-0.09]), while children granted middling abilities in both domains (mean BODY score: 0.35, 95% CI: [0.30-0.39]; mean HEART score: 0.51, 95% CI: [0.44-0.57]).
| Parameter | b | 95% CI | b | 95% CI | b | 95% CI | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercept (adults) | 0.41 | [ 0.38, 0.44] | * | 0.11 | [ 0.08, 0.15] | * | 0.75 | [ 0.72, 0.78] | * |
| Beetle vs. GM (adults) | 0.31 | [ 0.28, 0.34] | * | 0.06 | [ 0.02, 0.10] | * | -0.07 | [-0.10, -0.04] | * |
| Children vs. adults | 0.18 | [ 0.13, 0.22] | * | 0.43 | [ 0.37, 0.49] | * | 0.00 | [-0.05, 0.04] | |
| Interaction | -0.07 | [-0.11, -0.03] | * | -0.02 | [-0.08, 0.03] | 0.02 | [-0.02, 0.06] |
A series of Bayesian regression analyses confirmed these general impressions. Children’s BODY scores were generally higher than adults’ (see Table 5.1, “Children vs. adults” row for the BODY domain), particularly for the robot (see Figure 5.2, top row); as a result, the difference between the beetle and the robot was attenuated among children, relative to adults (see Table 5.1, “Interaction” row for the BODY domain). Children’s HEART scores were also higher than adults’ (see Table 5.1, “Children vs. adults” row for the HEART domain, and Figure 5.2, middle row), but this difference did not vary substantially across target characters (see Table 5.1, “Interaction” row for the BODY domain). There were no substantial differences between children and adults in their MIND scores (see Table 5.1 and Figure 5.2, bottom row).
Taken together, these observations highlight one especially striking difference between children and adults: For both edge cases, regardless of animacy status, children attributed substantially more HEART than did adults. Indeed, fully 70% of adults in Study 2 had HEART scores < 0.08 (i.e., answered at most one of the 6 HEART items with a response of “KINDA,” and otherwise answered “NO” to all HEART items). The more uniform distribution of children’s HEART scores across the 0-1 range stands in stark contrast to this adult standard; see Figure 5.2, panel B.
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OUTLINE:
adults:
children:
Study 3 builds on the investigation of middle childhood (7-9y) initiated in Study 2 and extends this exploration of conceptual change into earlier childhood (4-6y). In this chapter, I again focus on what this study can reveal about changes in the deployment of this concept—i.e., the attribution of BODY, HEART, and MIND to various beings in the world—over the course of early and middle childhood (7-9y).
To review, in Study 3, 116 US adults, 125 “older” children (7.08-9.98 years; median: 8.56y), and 124 “younger” children (4.00-6.98 years; median: 5.03y) each assessed a single target character on 20 mental capacities. This study employed the “diverse characters” variant of the general approach, with participants randomly or pseudo-randomly assigned to assess one of the following 9 characters: an elephant, a goat, a mouse, a bird, a beetle, a teddy bear, a doll, a robot, or a computer. (See Chapter II for detailed methods.)
As in Study 2, to facilitate comparison between the three age groups included in Study 3, I use adults’ BODY, HEART, and MIND scales (as described in Chapter IV) to analyze both age groups. For analyses using scales derived from EFA of children’s own responses, see [XX Appendix C].
See Figure 5.4, panel A, for BODY, HEART, and MIND scores for each of the nine target characters among the younger children (4-6y), older children (7-9y), and adults in Study 3, and Figure 5.4, panel B, for a visualization of scores with target characters grouped into animate beings (elephant, goat, mouse, bird beetle) vs. inanimate objects (teddy bear, doll, robot, computer). To facilitate comparison with Studies 2 and 4, I will focus here on animacy status, rather than analzying all target characters individually.
In the aggregate, all three age groups seem to have considered the animate beings included in this study to have a relatively high degree of physiological sensations (mean BODY score among adults: 0.91, 95% CI: [0.87-0.94]; among older children: 0.84, 95% CI: [0.81-0.87]; among younger children: 0.73, 95% CI: [0.67-0.78]), and a middling degree of social-emotional abilities (mean HEART score among adults: 0.42, 95% CI: [0.34-0.51]; among older children: 0.54, 95% CI: [0.48-0.60]; among younger children: 0.57, 95% CI: [0.51-0.64]). Assessments of animate beings’ abilities in the MIND domain appear to have varied more by age group: While adults tended to grant animate beings a high degree of perceptual-cognitive abilities (mean MIND score among adults: 0.84, 95% CI: [0.79-0.87]), younger children’s MIND scores tended to hover around the midpoint of the scale (mean: 0.50, 95% CI: [0.43-0.56]), with older children falling in between (mean: 0.66, 95% CI: [0.60-0.71]).
For the inanimate beings included in this study, there was a high degree of consensus among adults that such entities had virtually no physiological or social-emotional abilities (mean BODY score: 0.04, 95% CI: [0.01-0.07]; mean HEART score: 0.03, 95% CI: [0.01-0.08]). In contrast, both groups of children, in the aggregate, granted low to moderate abilities to inanimate beings in both the BODY domain (mean BODY score among older children: 0.19, 95% CI: [0.13-0.25]; among younger children: 0.29, 95% CI: [0.21-0.38]) and the HEART domain (mean HEART score among older children: 0.27, 95% CI: [0.18-0.37]; among younger children: 0.32, 95% CI: [0.24-0.40]). All three age groups, in the aggregate, granted middling perceptual-cognitive abilities to these inanimate characters (which included two “intelligent” technologies; mean MIND score among adults: 0.33, 95% CI: [0.23-0.43]; among older children: 0.47, 95% CI: [0.38-0.57]; among younger children: 0.34, 95% CI: [0.24-0.43]).
| Parameter | b | 95% CI | b | 95% CI | b | 95% CI | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercept (adults) | 0.47 | [ 0.44, 0.51] | * | 0.23 | [ 0.17, 0.28] | * | 0.58 | [ 0.53, 0.64] | * |
| Animate characters vs. GM (adults) | 0.44 | [ 0.40, 0.48] | * | 0.19 | [ 0.14, 0.25] | * | 0.25 | [ 0.20, 0.31] | * |
| Older children (7-9y) vs. adults | 0.04 | [-0.01, 0.09] | 0.18 | [ 0.11, 0.26] | * | -0.02 | [-0.10, 0.05] | ||
| Younger children (4-6y) vs. adults | 0.04 | [-0.02, 0.09] | 0.22 | [ 0.14, 0.29] | * | -0.17 | [-0.24, -0.09] | * | |
| Interaction: Older children (7-9y) vs. adults | -0.11 | [-0.16, -0.05] | * | -0.06 | [-0.13, 0.02] | -0.16 | [-0.23, -0.09] | * | |
| Interaction: Younger children (4-6y) vs. adults | -0.22 | [-0.27, -0.16] | * | -0.07 | [-0.14, 0.01] | -0.17 | [-0.25, -0.10] | * |
A series of Bayesian regression analyses confirmed these general impressions of differences across age groups.
Neither older nor younger children’s BODY scores were generally higher than adults’ (see Table 5.3, “Older children vs. adults” and “Younger children vs. adults” rows for the BODY domain), but in both groups of children the difference in BODY scores between animate vs. inanimate characters was attenuated, relative to adults (see Table 5.3, “Interaction” row for the BODY domain). Meanwhile, in the HEART domain, both older and younger children’s HEART scores were generally higher than adults’ (see Table 5.3, “Children vs. adults” row for the HEART domain, and Figure 5.4, middle row), but this difference did not vary substantially across target characters (see Table 5.3, “Interaction” row for the BODY domain). Finally, in the MIND domain, younger children’s (but not older children’s) MIND scores were substantially lower than adults’ (see Table 5.3, “Older children vs. adults” and “Younger children vs. adults” rows for the MIND domain). In addition, in both groups of children the difference in MIND scores between animate vs. inanimate characters was attenuated, relative to adults (see Table 5.3, “Interaction” row for the MIND domain).
XX INSERT DISCUSSION
OUTLINE:
adults: - like study 2, animate-inanimate distinction strongest in the BODY domain - like study 2, most beings not granted much HEART: variable among the animate beings (and very little among inanimates) - harkens back to ch04 - all animates granted MIND—and some inanimates (technologies, like study 2)
children:
Study 4 builds on Study 3 by providing a targeted investigation of representations of mental life in the preschool years (4-5y). In this chapter, I again focus on what this study can reveal about attributions of BODY, HEART, and MIND at the earliest point in development that I have examined so far, and compare the deployment of this concept among young children vs. adults.
To review, in Study 4, 104 US adults and 43 US children between the ages of 4.02-5.59 years (median: 4.73y) each assessed two target characters on 18 mental capacities, with all aspects of the experimental design tailored to be appropriate for this youngest age group. This study employed the “edge case” variant of the general approach, with participants assessing both a beetle or a robot in sequence (with order counterbalanced across participants). (See Chapter II for detailed methods.)
As in Studies 2 and 3, to facilitate comparison between children and adults in Study 4, I use adults’ BODY, HEART, and MIND scales (as described in Chapter IV) to analyze both age groups. For analyses using scales derived from EFA of children’s own responses, see [XX Appendix C].
See Figure 5.6, panel A, for BODY, HEART, and MIND scores for both target characters among the 4- to 5-year-old children and adults in Study 4. On the whole, participants’ assessments of these two “edge cases” in Study 4 were similar to those of adults’ and 7- to 9-year-old children in Study 2.
As in Study 2, in the aggregate, both children and adults seem to have considered the beetle (the animate character) to be a being with a moderately high degree of physiological sensations (mean BODY score among adults: 0.77, 95% CI: [0.72-0.82]; among children: 0.73, 95% CI: [0.66-0.80]) and perceptual-cognitive capacities (mean MIND score among adults: 0.61, 95% CI: [0.55-0.66]; among children: 0.56, 95% CI: [0.47-0.65]). Adults granted relatively little in the way of social-emotional abilities to the beetle (mean HEART score among adults: 0.23, 95% CI: [0.16-0.29]), but—with the older children in Study 2—children’s HEART scores tended to hover around the midpoint of the scale (mean: 0.46, 95% CI: [0.38-0.55]).
For the robot (the inanimate character) both adults and children, in the aggregate, indicated a moderate degree of perceptual-cognitive abilities (mean MIND score among adults: 0.62, 95% CI: [0.56-0.68]; among children: 0.55, 95% CI: [0.47-0.64]), and appeared to agree that the robot had less in the way of physiological sensations and social-emotional abilities than the beetle. However, echoing the results of Study 2, the two age groups appear to have diverged in their assessments of the absolute degree of BODY and HEART that they were willing to grant the robot: Adults granted very little in either domain (mean BODY score: 0.05, 95% CI: [0.03-0.07]; mean HEART score: 0.05, 95% CI: [0.02-0.08]), while children granted middling abilities in both domains (mean BODY score: 0.36, 95% CI: [0.27-0.44]; mean HEART score: 0.43, 95% CI: [0.34-0.52]).
| Parameter | b | 95% CI | b | 95% CI | b | 95% CI | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercept (adults) | 0.41 | [ 0.38, 0.44] | * | 0.14 | [ 0.10, 0.17] | * | 0.61 | [ 0.57, 0.65] | * |
| Beetle vs. GM (adults) | 0.36 | [ 0.33, 0.39] | * | 0.09 | [ 0.05, 0.12] | * | -0.01 | [-0.05, 0.03] | |
| Children vs. adults | 0.13 | [ 0.08, 0.19] | * | 0.31 | [ 0.24, 0.38] | * | -0.06 | [-0.14, 0.01] | |
| Interaction | -0.18 | [-0.23, -0.12] | * | -0.07 | [-0.14, 0.00] | * | 0.01 | [-0.06, 0.08] |
A series of Bayesian regression analyses confirmed these overall impressions, yielding remarkably similar results to the parallel comparison between 7- to 9-year-old children and adults in Study 2.
As in Study 2, children’s BODY scores were generally higher than adults’ (see Table 5.5, “Children vs. adults” row for the BODY domain). This appears to have been particularly true for the robot (see Figure 5.6, top row); as a result, the difference between the beetle and the robot was attenuated among children, relative to adults (see Table 5.5, “Interaction” row for the BODY domain). Again, as in Study 2, children’s HEART scores were also higher than adults’ (see Table 5.5, “Children vs. adults” row for the HEART domain, and Figure 5.6, middle row). In Study 4, this difference between children and adults was slightly more pronounced for the robot than the beetle (see Table 5.5, “Interaction” row for the BODY domain). And yet again, as in Study 2, there were no substantial differences between children and adults in their MIND scores (see Table 5.5 and Figure 5.6, bottom row)
XX INSERT DISCUSSION
OUTLINE:
adults:
children: